suspiciously._)

JOHN S. My violin has very much improved during the last twenty years.
On my honor, if Lizzie were a boy, she should learn to play on the
violin, to keep it in the family. Ha, ha, ha!

DOMINIE. That would be curious!

(_Dominie wishes to take leave with his daughter._)

MRS. S. (_condescendingly_). I hope you will come to see us again soon.
The next time Lizzie will play you Rosellen's "Tremolo;" and Miss Emma
must play us a piece too.

DOMINIE. You are extremely kind! (_Takes leave._)

CHAPTER VIII.

SINGING AND SINGING-TEACHERS.

_(A Letter to a Young Lady Singer.)_

MY DEAR MISS ----,--You are endowed with an admirable gift for singing,
and your agreeable though not naturally powerful voice has vivacity and
youthful charm, as well as a fine tone: you also possess much talent in
execution; yet you nevertheless share the lot of almost all your sisters
in art, who, whether in Vienna, Paris, or Italy, find only teachers who
are rapidly helping to annihilate the opera throughout Europe, and are
ruling out of court the simple, noble, refined, and true art of singing.
This modern, unnatural style of art, which merely aspires to superficial
effects, and consists only in mannerisms, and which must ruin the voice
in a short time, before it reaches its highest perfection, has already
laid claim to you. It is scarcely possible to rescue your talent,
unless, convinced that you have been falsely guided, you stop entirely
for a time, and allow your voice to rest during several months, and
then, by correct artistic studies, and with a voice never forced or
strong, often indeed weak, you improve your method of attack by the use
of much less and never audible breathing, and acquire a correct, quiet
guidance of the tones. You must also make use of the voice in the middle
register, and strengthen the good head-tones by skilfully lowering them;
you must equalize the registers of the voice by a correct and varied use
of the head-tones, and by diligent practice of _solfeggio_. You must
restore the unnaturally extended registers to their proper limits; and
you have still other points to reform. Are you not aware that this
frequent tremulousness of the voice, this immoderate forcing of its
compass, by which the chest-register is made to interfere with the
head-tones, this coquetting with the deep chest-tones, this affected,
offensive, and almost inaudible nasal _pianissimo_, the aimless jerking
o